


Totally Reliable Narration

by justwhatialwayswanted



Series: Apartment 314 [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Author Andrew, But also, Denial, Jean is mentioned, M/M, andreil if you squint and by squint i mean read the fic, if it's unclear jean and andrew are roommates and neil is their neighbor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24693634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justwhatialwayswanted/pseuds/justwhatialwayswanted
Summary: Obviously, Andrew bases characters off of people he knows.Unfortunately, characters based off of Neil have a tendency to ignore Andrew's outlines and do their own thing, and it only gets worse whenever he actually interacts with their real-life inspiration.
Series: Apartment 314 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785295
Comments: 23
Kudos: 141





	Totally Reliable Narration

**Author's Note:**

> major thank you to cassie for titling this fic and also this series in general u are amazing and idk how u keep coming up w good titles wtf. also shoutout to dumbfool for being encouraging about writing more in this au!!!

It's entirely possible that Andrew has been writing for seven hours straight.

He's not really sure anymore. All he knows is that he is on a roll and has to keep writing for as long as he can before he collapses over his keyboard, because he knows how his brain works and he knows that once this is over, he's basically going to be a lump on the couch for a few days. And if he's going to meet his word count goal for the week, that means he has to get them all out now.

So, in his defense, he has plenty of reasons to ignore the first knock on his door. Jean knows that Andrew gets like this, and there are very few problems so urgent that Jean actually needs to knock a second time. Usually, he knocks, and either Andrew answers or he doesn't, and then Jean goes away.

Today, apparently, is not Andrew's lucky day.

Because a second knock comes, only a few seconds after the first— or at least that's what it feels like— and Jean says through the bedroom door, "Andrew, I need your phone charger."

Urgh. At least he can just open the door and hand it to him and get back to what he was doing.

So Andrew pulls his phone charger out of the plug, takes a moment to acknowledge the thousands of words he's written today, and gets up from his desk chair, and opens his door, and promptly almost slams it shut again.

Because _Neil_ is here. In the hallway. Outside Andrew's room. With Jean.

Fucking Neil.

Andrew hates him with possibly every bone in his body. He's sarcastic and works out too much and has cats that are definitely too good for him. (Not that Andrew has any proof of that one, but he _knows_.) Also, once Andrew saw him drinking green juice and actually seeming to not hate it, so he's an enemy by default. 

But Andrew doesn't close the door, because the back of his brain dimly remembers that Jean has an iPhone (bourgeoisie European that he is) and therefore has no use for Andrew's phone charger. Which means...

"King destroyed my charger," Neil says, and he sounds casual but Andrew can see his blue eyes dancing just the slightest bit, like he knows _exactly_ how much his presence is pissing Andrew off. "Didn't notice until my phone died. Sorry."

Andrew does not have time for this. "Just take it," he finds himself biting out, and he tosses the charger at Neil and is only a little disappointed when he catches it. Next to him (and about a foot taller, although Andrew knows he's not one to talk), Jean rolls his eyes, but Andrew does not care. "Goodbye."

"Nice talking to you," Neil says, and Andrew closes the door, but not before he sees Neil _wave._ A finger-wiggling, taunting little wave that Andrew is absolutely going to write into this book because the sight of it has filled him with such rage that he's not going to be able to forget about it until he throws it into a word processor. It's insultingly casual, just like everything else about him.

Speaking of his book, though.

If anyone asks, Andrew is not one for routine, or superstition. But anyone who pays close enough attention will notice the way he taps his nails on his desk, just once, before he starts writing. The door is closed, and fucking Neil is gone, and so is Andrew's phone charger but that doesn't matter, he has no qualms about going across the hall to Neil's apartment and possibly breaking in if he doesn't get the charger back soon enough, and Jean will almost definitely leave him alone for the next few hours, which means it is time to _write._

First things first. Where is he going to put that annoying fucking wave?

The worst thing about this book is that, like all good authors, Andrew draws inspiration from the people around him. And given that he's a self-identified shut-in, the people around him are mostly limited to Jean, Nicky, Renee, the baristas at the coffee shop across the street (Jen puts the most whipped cream on drinks and Connor makes the least small talk), and Neil. Which means that Andrew can never get away from him. Not even in his own writing.

And the character that has drawn like... sixty-seven percent of his personality from Neil had the _gall_ to go and make himself an antihero type, and Andrew is preemptively cringing at how many people are going to love him. Especially since Andrew accidentally gave him a tragic, sympathetic backstory.

Disgusting.

But he can't force a character to go somewhere they don't want to go, which means he's stuck with this.

Maybe he can ask Renee for her thoughts. If anyone can come up with a character-driven way to completely remove Pel's antihero-ness and replace it with asshole-ness, she can.

It's settled. He'll ride this wave of creative inspiration for as long as he can, and then email Renee and ask her for help with his character arcs, and Renee will come up with some solution and Neil will return his phone charger (or else) and everything will be fine. And Andrew will spend the next few days sitting on the couch and watching children's cartoons specifically to annoy Jean. Also sleeping.

For now, if he wants to keep up this constant flow of writing, he needs to skip around the outline a bit, because this is a Sicia scene and she hasn't met up with Pel yet, and all the ideas buzzing under Andrew's skin are for Pel right now.

Fuck. If he writes any more of these scenes then he's going to have to either delete some of them or give in and make him a protagonist, and Andrew... really does not want to do that. Which is not about Neil, mostly. It's about the fact that interacting with Neil inspires him to write more scenes with Pel, because Neil is so goddamn annoying, and the Pel scenes he writes fresh off some Neil-sourced irritation always happen to be _good,_ and Andrew doesn't want to cut some of his best writing. Renee won't want him to, either.

So what the fuck is he supposed to do?

But second guessing is not something Andrew does, especially not when he's writing. He just writes shit and figures out how to make it fit together later. Now is not the time to change his strategy, not when it got him a book deal.

He texts Renee, anyway. _Pel is trying to make himself a protagonist._

She replies almost immediately, which doesn't surprise him— Renee, like Andrew, works from home and is pretty attached to her phone. _Okay! I'm excited to see what you've got!_

The exclamation marks mask the brutal edits she makes to manuscripts, but the deception doesn't really bother Andrew anymore. He's gone from mild irritation to apathy to some amusement, and Renee's combination of genuine kindness and ruthlessness has become one of the anchors of Andrew's life at the moment.

Maybe that's why he replies, _I blame Neil. He keeps turning up and then I keep writing more Pel scenes._

And without missing a beat, Renee replies, _If you say so <3_ _You were the one who decided to base another character off of him, though._

She's awful.


End file.
